OWS Reform/Accounting Reform Christine, Adam, Athony (all 3 finance), Chyno (Baltimore), Janet (OTR), Monica, (accountability and

transparency) Yoni, Shazz, Ravi, Darrell from SIS/Tech ops, Drew (tech Ops), James (info hub), more showed up later but names not taken. Est. a dozen people attended. Introductions around the table Stack for Agenda items Janet non-profit status Darrell- auditing Shazz- alternative fund raising OWS kickstarter Chyno- introduce Firm Fushion Partnership (umbrella non-profit) takes on nonprofits. Ravi- Building budgets report little professional help makes her nervous Drew- Alternative fund raising Drew: the way we were receiving funds going into a general account. Some going into Bank accounts. A project was begun called Perma bank. Who aims to identify needs and find donators. Find project needs for donors? Project can be given material donations as well as funds. Short term solution to do fund raising through Civi [a collective for free aps](open source platform) CRM? Identify occupations Constituent Relationship Management. Part of CRM gives ability to do donations based fund raising for goals. Take people who are involved in the project and then run campaigns for each project-put on the website. Darrell: Get more feedback- move to centralized model. We can be unified. Get ready for ikelihood of audit for two reasons 1) audit might be confusing after the fact, and 2) organization identity. Finances all together but recommend individual fundraising. Maybe a big show. Shazz: Roll out date? Decentralized model. Does everyone do their own fundraising and keep track of their own money. Ravi: Use groups that volunteer. We don t know what the movement is going to do. But there is no current fundraising. Centralized fundraising? Drew-Affinity Group- is going to produce a website that is very digestible and goes according to how they re planning. Donations on NYCGA get dumped into a general fund. And then there s on the ground collecting but no one knows where it goes. Yoni- We need a centralized system to keep it fair. We would be bought out be our donors and would be against anything we are for.

Christine: involved in Civi understands it s something we can do. Must be brought to the GA and a fiscal people (lawyers) Jan - Where is the money going? We all understand that we need to address the finances before we start making more money. Shazz- we should go back to audit and non-profit status for times sake. Anthony- Audit next and legal status Darrell not enough experience- missed receipts. To be honest if we had an accountant before we would have saved money. We were interviewing in Oct and I don t know what happened. I talked to an accountant and it will cost $15,000. We need to get an audit done anyway. There were a lot of things the accountant was worried about with how things were done. This might lead to an IRS audit if it keeps going they way it is. Christine- Report back. Alliance for Global Justice. What we are _ We are not a nonprofit - we are their project. Good news is we have access to their accountant. Bigger legal conversation - A project does not get audited by itself. Something came up earlier that donations are tax deductible. That s where we are. They run big projects. Janet: Is OWS their project? We still have to provide receipts and can be audited. NYCGA is Our (unincorporated company to OWS) . Is NyCGA and OWS one group. No. Bank account was set up by Victoria - Alliance for Global Justice EIN was issued -Victoria got it. Wylie is a lawyer who does civil rights and he has the paperwork maybe. We presently have 3 accounts. Friends of Liberty Park Main Account Balance???? Amalgamated -Lower East side Credit for Bail $92,000 approx. Amalgamated Union run -Never touched cash donations from park Documentation for the company is at Wylies office These questions have been answered so many times. Drew: If you come to tech they can help set up the documentation. It s important to have all the documentation open and accessible. Go the wiki page and look at the tech. Chyno wants to know why hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent and months later there is no openness by now? Darrell: There s a proposal to make this open or add the budget proposals and then sent back to Darrell. There are signers on the account. I ordered debit cards but that didn t go through. I gave a format but at least it would start the discussion.

Janet I think we need to have open transparency see the documents and bank accounts so we know exactly what s come in and where the funds have gone. We can t make a budget if we don t know how much we have. Ravi- One thing that would be useful is to look at structural issues. Information gathering is needed first. Groups of things that are needed.. People keep asking the same questions. The other thing is the turn over in accounting. Amateurs are trying to do it. We can t have a conversation with accounting. This is the first time we have been able to do this (talk with finance). If this group wants to move forward we need answers. If we need to have a group to interview bookkeepers I can help. We would actually have an open meeting and answer questions. A lot of the problem people have gone off, so we should support the people left. Christine- I ve been answering the questions. The accounting working group does work by consensus. I want to make clear that the things I say are to the best of my ability. I m doing my best to give the best information I have. I can bring info to the GA tomorrow. We ve been transitioning away from the office. I want to sit down and have a data entry party. We can all help input. We have been having such a massive cash flow in here and the amounts of money are many times higher than other Occupies. We re working hard to do that. Now that petty cash is over???? Chyno- Another thing was who gave working groups $100 per day, which was really stupid. Budget proposal from Ravi can help with transparency. Darrell I m not trying to be antagonistic to you. There is some frustration and Christine wasn t there. Victoria wasn t that involved and Pete came on afterward. In terms of what accounting is doing it s been one reason (excuse) after another. Now there s only one stream of income and expenses should be easy but there s been no reporting. ????- We have intelligent people in this movement but it was like high school people took over. Some of things that happened shouldn t have, money should have been handled intelligently. Christine -You are correct that things could have been done better. The GA made the decision. It was fly by night. We had Joanne Flemming as an accountant she quit in frustration. When people were asking for housing why was it so hard to get but others got money easy? People left at this point to attend spokes council meeting. Janet tried to get more answers about accounts and how much has been received. Christine said somewhere between $500, 000 + 1,000,000. Back and forth ensued nothing accomplished. Videographer was filming it. All signed releases but Janet asked for a copy as a condition of release.